The present invention relates to containers for temporarily storing and/or delivering prepared hot or cold foods or other chattel, and more particularly a box for temporarily storing or delivering a food item such as a hot pizza.
Corrugated containers are frequently used to temporarily store foods that have been heated. For example, corrugated boxes are often used to store pizzas during delivery. Such a corrugated box is likely made from a triple sheet of paper (doublefaced corrugated) that has been selectively cut and creased to facilitate folding the sheet of corrugated material into a box. Desirable characteristics for a food container such as a box include sufficient rigidity to prevent collapse of the box under strain, sufficient thermal characteristics to prevent the food item from severe temperature change, and sufficient ventilation to allow escape or retention of moisture from the interior of the box to prevent the food item from becoming soggy or dehydrated.
An example of a pizza box with several of these advantageous characteristics is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,441,626 to Hall. The Hall pizza box is formed from a unitary, double-faced corrugated cardboard blank which is creased to facilitate folding it up into a box. The pizza box includes a number of ventilation holes and has a single-faced corrugated insert that is glued to the bottom portion of the pizza box. The corrugated insert is stated to provide the advantages of preventing grease from dripping from the box and facilitate good air circulation within the pizza box to prevent the pizza crust from becoming soggy.
While the foregoing advantages are generally desirable, the Hall pizza box suffers from a number of disadvantages due to increased material requirements and a more complicated assembly procedure. For example, the bottom portion of the Hall pizza box requires two corrugated paperboard layers and three flat paperboard layers. Also, the Hall pizza box requires a relatively complicated manner of folding the corrugated board blank to form the box. The Hall pizza box requires at least seven folds of the blank to form the box. It is obvious that the necessity of making more folds would require an increased assembly time, which of course, would contribute more to the cost of labor.